1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and, more particularly, to processing of a representative picture of a moving image file.
2. Related Background Art
Recently, a camera-integrated digital disk recorder has been proposed for recording photographed moving image data as a moving image file. Also, a digital camera has been proposed for recording photographed moving image data as a moving image file in a solid memory such as a memory card.
In such apparatus, a user selects and reproduces a target moving image file from a plurality of recorded moving image files by verifying a thumbnail (index) image corresponding to each moving image file.
The thumbnail image is a still image, in which a representative picture corresponding to each moving image file is reduced from a normal size, and it has been suggested to use one frame being at a head of each moving image data as a representative picture.
However, depending on a content to be photographed, a head frame of each moving image data does not always represent the moving image data. If such a head frame is used as a thumbnail, it may be difficult for the user to search the target moving image file.
For example, if photographing is started in a fading-in manner from a black picture screen, a thumbnail prepared from the head frame is displayed on a totally black picture and, consequently, a content of the moving image frame cannot be determined from this thumbnail.
In order to avoid the above-described problem, instead of the head frame, one frame positioned after a passage of a given period from the head may be employed as a thumbnail image.
Such a case is effective when photographing is started in the fading-in manner from the black picture screen. However, data of a moving image photographed by the user contains a variety of contents, and thus the above-described case is not effective for all of the contents.
Especially, to make use of features of a digital disk camera or a digital camera capable of randomly designating and reproducing a plurality of recorded moving image files, it is important to provide a method of more easily forming a thumbnail image to the user so that the user can easily understand contents of the thumbnail image intuitively when selecting a target moving image file.